Tung Oil Can Be Food-Safe (These Are The Brands)

This article covers regulations that identify food-contact-safe tung oil/Chinawood oil, which brands are considered food-contact-safe and which brands are not.

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Main Regulations To Identify Food-Contact-Safe Coatings

1. FDA Cleared Ingredients – Section 175.300 lists cleared ingredient materials for resinous and polymeric coatings (i.e. paints and coatings). This lists ingredients that are “intended for repeated food-contact use and is applied to any suitable substrate as a continuous film or enamel that serves as a functional barrier between the food and the substrate.”
   • Tung Oil – Pure tung oil is listed as cleared here.
   • “Resinous and polymeric coatings may be safely used as the food-contact surface of articles intended for use in producing, manufacturing, packing, processing, preparing, treating, packaging, transporting, or holding food…”
   • “Drying oils, including the triglycerides or fatty acids derived therefrom:… Chinawood (tung)….”
   • “The oils may be raw, heat-bodied, or blown. They may be refined by filtration, degumming, acid or alkali washing, bleaching, distillation, partial dehydration, partial polymerization, or solvent extraction, or modified by combination with maleic anhydride”.
2. Testing of final dried or cured product meeting government standards of 21 CFR 175.300 for migration (as opposed to looking at individual ingredients to see if they have clearance).
3. Substances Added to Food and GRAS Ingredients per FDA– “Generally Recognized as Safe” food substances per the FDA. This this does depend on how the ingredient is used, though this list can help support food safety claims of ingredients in coatings.
   • D-limonene – used as a solvent with tung oil, is an approved under Substances Added to Food and is GRAS here.
4. Toy Safe – For tung oil products with metal driers or earth oxide pigments, EU Toy Safe EN:71 is a good regulation. It means it’s certified safe to be chewed on by a baby or child. They test for leaching (simulated in stomach acid) of toxic elements including aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barium, boron, cadmium, Chromium (III), Chromium (VI), cobalt, copper, lead, manganese, mercury, nickel, selenium, strontium, tin, organic tin, and zinc. (source) (This does not mean they are 100% free of these elements, but their thresholds for what they allow in leaching are low).
5. Prop 65 Warning – This is California’s list of chemicals that are known to the state of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm. Though a product can have a Prop 65 warning/chemical and still be considered food-contact-safe based on testing of the cured product to comply with 21 CFR 175.300.

Food Safe Tung Oil & Solvent Brands

Pure Tung Oil from The Real Milk Paint Company. This is pure Tung Oil so it is approved for food contact by the FDA. This is the top brand as they are a small family-owned company that goes to great lengths to produce the purest products possible from what I have seen.

Citrus Solvent is used with Tung Oil in most wood applications and is considered food safe via Substances Added to Food and GRAS classification.

Half and Half by the Real Milk Paint Company – a mix of half their pure Tung Oil and half Citrus Solvent from above.

Hope’s 100% Pure Tung Oil – is food safe since it’s pure.

Rust-Oleum Watco Butcher Block Oil which is based on tung oil (2.5-10%) and an alkyd resin is considered food-contact safe. Though it contains ingredients like cobalt (Prop 65), benzene (Prop 65), mineral spirits and more, the final cured coating complies with FDA’s food-contact regulations (21 CFR 175.300) when dry, says the company.

Based on my preferences for what I like to avoid, this is not the product I would go with myself.

Where You Can Use Food-Contact Safe Tung Oil:

Tables, plates, bowls, wooden utensils, highchairs, cutting boards, toys, play sets, serving trays, display trays, butcher block countertops, charcuterie boards, cheese boards, pepper mills, rolling pins, spatulas, mortar and pestle, wooden coasters, chopsticks, skewers, salad servers, honey dippers, ladles, tongs, citrus reamers, sushi rice paddles, wooden beverage stirrers, baby spoons and forks, pizza peels, spice scoops, breadboards, breadbox.

Tung Oil Ingredients That May Not Be Considered Food-Contact-Safe:

These ingredients are not cleared individually, and some trigger a Prop 65 warning, or could contribute to a product not being certified Toy Safe EN:71, yet some of them can certainly still be ingredients in food-contact-safe tung oil-based products in the US based on extractive/migration testing of the fully cured film per 175.300 (FDA).

Driers/siccatives like: manganese, cobalt, lead (lead is not used in tung oil currently but was used in the past), zirconium.

Biocides/preservatives like: formaldehyde releasers, isothiazolinones, zinc pyrithione.

Solvents like: Mineral spirits, toluene, benzene, methylene chloride (dichloromethane) (not used anymore in the US, naphtha (aromatic or aliphatic).

Other oils like: Boiled linseed oil (with driers), alkyd resins, epoxidized soybean oil.

Other additives like: Phthalate plasticizers (DEHP, DBP), hindered amine light stabilizers (HALS), UV stabilizers / antioxidants (e.g. BHT).

Brands Not Considered Food Contact Safe

Minwax Tung Oil – the company says “we don’t make anything considered food grade”.

It carries a Prop 65 warning. It lists Cobalt on the SDS which is a Prop 65 chemical and restricted in Toy Safe EN71. As well as Light Aliphatic Hydrocarbon, Med. Aliphatic Hydrocarbon Solvent, and Methyl Ethyl Ketoxime which are not enumerated in 21 CFR 175.300(b), not listed in FDA’s Food Contact Substance Inventory, and they carry industrial-use SDS profiles (with “Food and Drug: Not regulated”).

Rust-Oleum Watco Tung Oil is not a food-grade finish and not recommended for cutting boards, the company says. Instead, they recommend Rust-Oleum Watco Butcher Block Oil which is listed above under brands.

Formby’s – now redirects to Minwax.

Corinne Segura is an InterNACHI-certified Healthy Homes Inspector with certifications in Building Biology, Healthier Materials and Sustainable Buildings, and more. She has 10 years of experience helping others create healthy homes. You can book a consult here.